












































































































AMS PRESS 

NEW YORK 


Reprinted from a copy in the collections 
of the Harvard College Library 


Reprinted from the edition of 1886, Cambridge 
First AMS EDITION published 1971 
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THE INFLUENCE OF ITALIAN 


UPON 


ENGLISH LITERATURE 

DURING THE SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH 
CENTURIES. 


h ROSS MURRAY, B.A. 

SCHOLAR OF ST JOHN’S COLLEGE. 


BEING THE ESSAY WHICH OBTAINED THE LE BAS PRIZE , 1885. 


CAMBRIDGE: 
DEIGHTON, BELL, AND CO. 
LONDON: GEORGE BELL AND SONS. 
1886 




PREFACE. 


In the following pages an attempt is made to esti¬ 
mate accurately the nature and extent of the influence 
exercised by Italy upon the English writers of the 
Elizabethan and Stuart periods. General remarks upon 
the Renaissance and its developments in different parts 
of Europe have been avoided, except where they served 
to illustrate the special subject of consideration. So 
much has been written upon the Renaissance that it 
seemed unnecessary to repeat what has already received 
all but universal recognition. But it is possible to show 
almost exactly how much English Literature owes to 
Italy, as distinct from the debt due to other countries, 
and from the undefinable influences which are abroad in 
an age like that of the Renaissance. To show when 
and how this debt commenced, how it accumulated, and 
what the consequences were to the debtor is the object 
of this essay. 






CONTENTS. 


I. 

Homely Rimers . 

PAGE 

7 

II. 

Courtly Makers . 

.15 

III. 

Italian and English Novels . 

• • • • • 20 

IV. 

Our Dramatists’ Debts 

.27 

V. 

Signs of the Times 

. 39 

VI. 

English and Italian Epics . 

. 43 

VII. 

English and Italian Lyrics . 

. 56 


Conclusion .... 









THE FOLLOWING WORKS, AMONGST 
OTHERS, HAVE BEEN USED; 


Sismondi, Literature of the South of Europe. 
J. A. Symonds, Renaissance in Italy. 

Collier’s Dramatic Literature. 

Ward’s History of English Drama. 

Symonds, Predecessors of Shakspere. 

WartOn’s History of English Poetry. 

Gosse, Seventeenth Century Studies. 

Morley, Manual of English Literature 
Symonds, Italian Byways. 


I. HOMELY RIMERS. 

‘Vernacular literature all but dead 1 ,’—‘Poetry and 
Religion no longer capable of suggesting a genuine 
sentiment 2 /—* style, metre, rhyme, language, art of every 
kind is at an end’—such is the verdict usually pro¬ 
nounced upon the English writers who flourished, or 
rather did not ‘flourish/ during the first quarter of the 
sixteenth century. Some, however, hesitate to acquiesce 
in the justice of this sentence. .They discover germs of 
life, nay, they discover signs of a healthy and vigorous 
life where others see nothing but the symptoms of 
disease, infirmity or death. In their opinion the poetry 
of the period ‘ may be fairly described as the dawn 
of a new day 3 / and they are inclined to associate it 
rather with the glorious developments that took place 
during the reigns of Henry VII I/s children than with 
the darkness and barrenness of the fifteenth century. 

But however much critics may differ, they appear to 
agree in ,one respect, namely, in treating this period as 
one that is undeserving of any very serious or prolonged 
attention. The text-books which claim to give to the 
‘beginner’ a general survey of the field of English 

1 J. R. Green, Short History, p. 390. 

2 Taine, Eng. Literature , Bk. I. chap, m, 

3 Craik, Manual Eng. Lit. p. 191. 


8 


HOMELY RIMERS. 


Literature may perhaps be excused for hurrying over 
this portion with a passing observation or two, but it 
may well be asked what reason there is for the neglect 
from which it suffers at the hands of those whose 
business and whose delight consist in drawing forth and 
exhibiting those treasures which are to be found even in 
the midst of the rubbish-heaps of past ages. Why has 
the indefatigable Prof. Arber not given us, amongst his 
numerous reprints, more of the verses written by the 
contemporaries of Roy and Tyndal, ‘doggrel’ though 
they be ? Why has no Dr. Grosart yet appeared to 
present the lovers of our old literature with sumptuous 
editions of the complete works of Barclay and Skelton ? 

The reason is not far to seek, and perhaps from 
certain points of view it is a fair one. The fact is that 
the early part of the sixteenth century lies under a 
double disadvantage,—first that of being undeniably 
.feeble in imagination and all that constitutes poetic 
genius, secondly that of being in such close proximity 
to the extraordinary outburst of literary activity which 
found its precursors in Wyatt and Surrey, and rose to 
its height in Spenser and Shakspere. The glimmering 
of the pre-Renaissance night became darkness when 
compared with the brilliancy of the galaxy which ac¬ 
companied the shining of that ‘bright occidental star’ 
which arose in the second half of the century. 

But surely this fact, to anyone who wishes* to have a 
comprehensive view of literature, and of the causes 
which make or mar its prosperity, will be an inducement 
leading him to seek the motive-power and reason of so 
great and so sudden a change, and in order to arrive at 
this he is bound to examine the writings of the pre- 
Renaissance authors,—to notice what are the character¬ 
istic differences between these and their Elizabethan 


HOMELY RIMERS. 


9 


successors ; to consider what influences the writers were 
subject to in each case, and which of these influences 
came from abroad, which from home, and whether the 
former or the latter exerted more power. 

Our task at present is to make only one part of this 
investigation. We have to consider whether any in¬ 
fluence from Italy was at work in England when Hawes, 
Barclay, Skelton, Hey wood and their contemporaries 
represented English literature, and what effect, if any, 
such influence had upon their work. 

Now if we were to select one feature of fhese writings 
as more prominent than any of the others it would 
probably be their plain, homely character—a plainness 
and homeliness peculiarly English, apparent alike in 
their matter, form and spirit. The topics with which 
they deal are mostly national and popular, or such as 
occasion frequent notices of the manners and life of the 
people, so much so that they have a considerable value 
for the historical student. Robin Hood is a favourite 
subject of reference. Cardinal Wolsey is a butt for 
satirical allusion. Chaucer and Lydgate, the poets of 
the people, are the models after which they are formed, 
and to which they pay tribute. Stephen Hawes knew 
much of their poetry by heart. Even "when the themes 
are taken from foreign, sources, only such are chosen as 
admit of being easily adapted to English taste; thus— 
the Narrenschiff of Brandt, translated by Barclay, was 
just the thing for the people who were catered for by 
William Roy and John Bale. 

The homeliness of these authors is however far more 
noticeable in the style, metre, and diction which they 
adopt, and whj/ch is of an essentially popular rather than 
of a scholarly or courtly kind. The Chaucerian stanza 
is the favourite of Hawes and Barclay, who had neither 


10 


HOMELY RIMERS. 


inclination nor ability enough to attempt other measures. 
As for John Skelton—that ‘rude railing rhymer’— 
whatever may be thought of the merits of his verse it 
cannot be' denied that it has a vigour and plainness 
which is peculiarly Saxon. Let him defend himself: 

“For though my rime be ragged, 

Tattered and jagged, 

Rudely rain-beaten, 

Rusty and mooth-eaten, 

If ye take wel therewith 
It hath in it some pith.” 

But most of all in the tone and temper of what they have 
written does the sturdy independence of English charac¬ 
ter, as yet unaffected by foreign influences of any 
objectionable kind, show itself,—the character which 
appears stamped on every- page of honest Latimer’s 
sermons. Through all their works there runs a tone of 
seriousness, and in the poetfy it prevails as much as 
anywhere. The Pastime of Pleasure is a long sermon in 
verse. ‘Pregnant’ Barclay not only chose a didactic 
poem for translation into English, but moralized therein 
on his, own account as well as on Brandt’s. Some of 
Skelton’s best pieces are his invectives against the 
degenerate clergy, and his satires on the social and 
religious abuses of the times. 

Other characteristics of this poetry go to prove that 
it was almost entirely the production of native forms 
and ideas, and was very slightly affected by influences 
from outside. It shows a painful dearth of originality 
of thought, a want of imagination, an absence of the 
creative faculty. Barclay is little more than a versifier 
of other men’s ideas. Hawes merely follows in the 
track of Chaucer. Skelton, who is by far the most 
powerful of the three, never soars into the regions of 


HOMELY RIMERS. 


I 


fancy. Hey wood is dull and obscure in his allegories 1 , 
occasionally witty in his epigrams, and coarsely jovial 
in his interludes. There is no elegance of style, no 
grace of expression, no refinement of thought in these 
poets. Hawes was the only one who had any apprecia¬ 
tion of the uses of Romance and Allegory, and what he 
had was borrowed from Dan Chaucer and ‘ Moral * 
Gower. 

These facts are worth noticing because it is almost 
certain that during this time the foreign influences 
which were destined to produce such a remarkable 
change, or at least to aid in producing it, were already 
entering the country. The proofs of this are not nu¬ 
merous but they are sufficiently conclusive. It was at 
the Universities that the first signs appeared. In the 
reign of Henry VII. Italian poets were in demand at 
the Court, and Italian rhetoricians at the University. 
Cambridge was so ‘ destitute of skill in Latinity ’ that it 
had to procure the services of a certain Caius Auberinus, 
an Italian, ‘for composing the public orations and 
epistles.’ In the year 1488 we find one Cornelio Vitelli 
at Oxford, an Italian who had come ‘ to give that 
barbarous University some notions 2 .’ Three years later 
Grocyn, fresh from the teaching of the famous Politian, 
came to Exeter College. Colet and Linacre were only 
two out of a number of Englishmen who had visited 
Italy, and associated with the best known litterati of 
Florence arid Padua. Travel to foreign Universities had 


1 Harrison (Description of England ) very fairly observes with regard 
to Hey wood’s tedious poem called the The Spider and the Fly that “he 
dealeth so profoundly, and beyond all measure of skill, that neither he 
himself that made it, neither any one that readeth it, can reach unto the 
meaning thereof.” 

* Anthony k Wood. 


12 


HOMELY RIMERS. 


become so common that Barclay thought it necessary to 
enter a protest against the custom, not having any high 
opinion of its results. The nobility and higher clergy 
seem to have made a practice of securing learned 
Italians as tutors for their children, or even for them¬ 
selves, and when John Fisher was recommended to send 
for an Italian to teach him Greek, Erasmus dissuaded 
him on the ground that these foreigners, however suc¬ 
cessful in imparting learning, did not promote good 
manners. At Court too, Italian manners, whether good 
or bad, were being gradually introduced. In 1512 ‘on 
the day of the Epiphany, at night, the king with eleven 
others was disguised after the manner of Italy, called a 
Mask, a thing not seen before in England 1 .’ Educated 
men began to be dissatisfied with what they considered 
the rudeness and barbarism of the vernacular, and sought 
to enrich it with foreign words. 

It is important to observe therefore that, notwith¬ 
standing these innovating tendencies, scarcely any effect 
was- produced upon the generation of literary men 
represented by Hawes, Barclay and Skelton, as far as 
the form and substance and spirit of their poetry was 
concerned. Of course they were not unaffected by the 
great movement that was then passing from Italy over 
the whole of Western Europe—the ‘ New Learning.’ 
Skelton himself was no mean scholar and was honoured 
by Erasmus with the proud title ‘Unum Britannicarum 
litterarum decus et lumen/ But this involved no ‘ apish 
imitation’ of Italian ideas as set forth by Pulci or 
Boiardo or others of the moderns. If they imitated 
Southern poets it was to Petrarch or Mantuan that they 
went. Skelton 2 , in a list of poets of all nations whom 

1 Edward Hall, Chronicle. 

2 Skelton, Garland of Laurel. 


HOMELY RIMERS. 


13 


he supposes to be gathered together in the presence 
of Pallas, mentions among others “ Boccaccio with his 
volumys grete...Poggius Florentinus, with many a mad 
tale...Plutarch and Petrarch, two famous clerkis,” but 
does not mention any of the Italians who had already 
enriched their vernacular with many a lively poem, and 
were even venturing to rival Petrarch in the writing of 
sonnets. Barclay avows his obligation to Mantuan, but 
shows no acquaintance with the recent developments of 
Italian poetry. It is true that a few translations from 
Italian authors were made during this period, but they 
were made, in almost every case from the Latin, showing 
that at present the influence was chiefly academical. 
Thus Barclay’s first three Eclogues were derived from 
the Miseriae Curialium of Aeneas Sylvius, and the 
large debts which Sir Thos. Elyot in his Governour 
owed to the Italians were all due to the Latin works of 
Pontano, Beroaldo and Patrizzi 1 . The fact that in 1532 
there was printed a versification of Boccaccio’s story of 
Sigismunda and Guiscardo does not necessarily point 
to any new Italian influence, for the story had become, 
in a sense, English property, having been previously 
translated as early as the fourteenth century, when, as 
any reader of Chaucer knows, Boccaccio was well known 
in England. Stephen Hawes is said by Warton 2 to 
have ‘become a complete master of the French-and 
Italian poetry,’ but whereas the marks of his French 
accomplishments are conspicuous in .Grande Amour , it 
is hard to find in his poems any trace of familiarity with 
Italian. A few Italian phrases occur in Skelton, but 
they prove nothing, for the poem in which they are 

1 See the very thorough edition of Elyot’s Governour by H. Croft, 
Introd. 

a Hist, Eng. Poetry , in. p. 170. 


H 


HOMELY RIMERS. 


found 1 was intended to be a ‘mingle-mangle’ of all 
kinds of words and phrases jumbled together. It has 
been supposed that to Skelton may be attributed the 
introduction to England of that species of poetry which 
was invented in Italy and received the title ‘ Macaronic/ 
but even supposing that the mixture of words from 
Latin with the vernacular is rightly described as Maca¬ 
ronic, it seems impossible that Skelton could have 
derived it from its inventor, for Folengo’s Macaronices 
was not published till 1521 and Skelton died in 1529, 
so that even if the Speake Parrot was one of his latest 
poems, there is scarcely time for Folengo’s idea to reach 
England. 

If indeed it be a fact that Sir Thomas More derived 
the idea of his Utopia from Amerigo Vespucci’s 
account of his voyages, then it must be confessed that 
this period owes at least one considerable debt to Italy, 
but this is no indication whatever that Italian books 
were being circulated in England, even had we forgotten 
the fact that the first book of Utopia was both written 
and printed on the Continent, and that Antwerp and 
Louvain were familiar with the Italians while these were 
still strangers to home-keeping Britons. 

Our conclusion therefore must be that during the 
first quarter of the sixteenth century no perceptible 
change or development had taken place in English 
literature through the incoming of Italian influence. 
Perhaps we may assign 1529, the year of Skelton’s 
death, as the epoch when the signs of a ‘ new departure ’ 
first appeared, in the altogether different poetry which 
will now have to be described. 


Speake Parrot. ■ 


II. COURTLY MAKERS. 

The first distinct impetus in the direction of imitating 
the modern Italian poetry came from the Court. We 
have already seen how the germs of this movement 
existed, how Italian poets were hired occasionally for 
the amusement of the lords and ladies of Henry VII.’s 
Court, and how Italian masks became fashionable early 
in the reign of Henry VIII. The latter king, in addition 
to his fondness for pomp and gaiety, had an affection for 
learning and the Belles Lettres, and his court soon 
imbibed a taste for that refinement which was only to be 
found in France and Italy, and the special home and 
nursery of which was the land where Lorenzo de Medici 
patronized Learning, Poetry, Sculpture and Painting, 
and where Ariosto and Boiardo, Trissino and Sanazzaro 
were already household names. Men who had learnt to 
admire the finished elegance and musical versification of 
such poets were not likely to retain much love for the 
ragged rimes of Skelton. They began to try whether 
their own language was not capable of becoming the 
vehicle of sonnets, madrigals and canzoni like those in 
which the ready Florentine sang graceful praises to his 
mistress. The two men who set the example of this 
‘ Italianizing ’ were both courtiers, and the passage in 
which Puttenham mentions their work, although well 


16 


COURTLY MAKERS. 


known, cannot be omitted here, because it describes so 
exactly the general nature of the result which they 
achieved. He says 1 ‘There sprang up a new Company 
of Courtly makers of whom Sir Thomas Wyatt the elder, 
and Henry Earl of Surrey were the two Chieftains; who 
having travelled into Italy, and there tasted the sweet 
and stately measures and style of the Italian poesy, as 
novices newly crept out of the schools of Dante, Ariosto 
and Petrarch, they greatly polished our rude and homely 
manner of vulgar poesy.’ 

The only correction necessary to make upon this. 
passage is that no proof exists that Surrey was ever irn 
Italy, this supposition having arisen merely from a 
legendary account that grew up around the name of the 
Tuscan Geraldine whose praises he sings. We know 
however that Wyatt did spend some time in Italy, and 
it is he whom we must regard as the first importer into 
our island of the lyrical love-poetry which has since 
formed so considerable a part of our literature. But the 
claims of Wyatt and Surrey in this direction are now so 
generally recognized that it will only be necessary to 
state, as a commentary on Puttenham’s remarks, the 
exact amount that they contributed towards the develop¬ 
ment of our poetry, and the extent to which this con¬ 
tribution was supplied to them by Italy. Without 
attempting therefore to assign to each of these ‘ Courtly 
makers’ his proper share in the result, and without 
trying to draw a comparison and a contrast between the 
two men—though this would be interesting enough—we 
may say briefly that the result they achieved was three¬ 
fold. First they brought the sonnet into use. Secondly, 
they introduced blank-verse. Thirdly, they proved that 
the language was capable of finer things than had ever 
1 Art of English Poesie in loc. 


COURTLY MAKERS. 


i; 

before been attempted, or, in the words of a modern 
critic, became ‘ the earliest exact writers of the modern 
tongue.’ 

But how much of this result was due to Italian 
influence ? We may confidently answer—almost the 
whole of it. The fact is that these ‘ Chieftains ’ of the 
‘ new company,’ however talented, were under the com¬ 
plete control of their Italian masters. They are simply 
clever and graceful imitators, they produce nothing 
original. They can sing sweetly, but only the songs 
that their music-masters have taught them ; they can 
compose elegantly, but only in the style that they learnt 
in their foreign schools. They have been so charmed 
with the ease and melody of Italian verse that they are 
almost exclusively occupied with attempting to reproduce 
it in their own tongue, and seldom think of daring to 
strike out on lines of their own. Thus Wyatt, when 
translating the sentiments of Alamanni, is not satisfied 
unless he faithfully copies also the style, and reproduces 
the terza rima of the original. In the same way 
Surrey, when the idea of translating Virgil into English 
verse occurs to him, not only chooses exactly the two 
books which Francesco Molza had recently turned into 
Italian, but imitates the versi sciolti of Molza in his 
blank verse. Again, why is it that both Wyatt and 
Surrey, in paraphrasing parts of the Bible, happen to 
choose the Psalms, and out of all the Psalms—those 
called the Penitential ? Simply because they found that 
these Psalms had been versified by their models, Dante 
and Alamanni. 

It may be observed too that almost all the sentiments 
of their smaller poems are echoes of ideas already put into 
verse by the Tuscan poets. Still it would be unjust to deny 
them the merits of freshness and vivacity, or to say that 
LE BAS. 2 


18 


COURTLY MAKERS. 


Wyatt did not think for himself; his pieces on ‘ How to 
use the Court and himself therein/ and on ‘ The mean 
and sure estate ’ contain reflections suggested more by 
his own life than by anything he had read in books. 

One more comment must be made on Puttenham’s 
statement quoted above, and that is to emphasize the 
force of his happy phrase ‘ Courtly makers/ It must 
not be supposed that the style of poetry introduced by 
Surrey and Wyatt speedily became popular. On the 
contrary, it remained for several years a fashion almost 
confined to the Court and its ‘hangers-on.’ Their poems 
were never printed till 1557 , when they came out in 
Tottels Miscellany , and until that time they were 
handed about in MSS. among the nobility and in the 
fashionable circles, beyond which the sensation produced 
hy them rarely travelled. Thus amongst their imitators 
we notice the names of Lord Morley, Lord Vaux, 
Sir Francis Bryan, Viscount Rochfort, all of whom are 
supposed to have contributed to Totters Miscellany , or 
similar collections. But they seem to have had the effect 
of stimulating the study of Italian. We know that 
Elizabeth, Edward VI. and Lady Jane Grey were all 
well read in the language. Nor was this taste confined 
to the upper classes. From an inscription on a tomb 
dating 1537 , it appears that a citizen’s wife, Elizabeth 
Lucar by name, understood ‘Latin, Spanish and Italian, 
writing, speaking and reading it with perfect utterance 1 / 
No doubt this good woman was a prodigy, but there are 
other things to show that during the last years of 
Henry VIII. an interest in Italian literature was growing. 
In 1545 Roger Ascham 2 complains of the introduction 
of outlandish words from the Italian into common speech. 

1 Strype’s Parker., 1. p. 358. 

2 Toxophilus. 


COURTLY MAKERS. 


19 


About the same time a series of pamphlets appeared on 
the subject of Women and Wives, bearing various titles, 
which seem to have been suggested by the famous 
Italian story of Belfegor to which Macchiavelli had 
given such wide circulation. There were several Italians 
of culture resident in England, who would doubtless 
encourage at the Universities and elsewhere the study 
of their own unequalled literature. Peter Martyr, more 
properly called Vermigli, was at Oxford, and Bernardino 
Ochino was Prebendary of Canterbury. 

But in spite of all this, the new movement failed to 
touch the people; it only stirred the few. It would 
require something more than ‘Courtly makers’ to 
popularize Italian authors or Italian fashions of writing 
and speaking among the sober, homely English folk 
with whom Hey wood and Skelton were still favourites. 
Elegantly composed love-ditties, and sentimental sonnets 
were -all very well for ladies and gentleman who had 
nothing else to do but sentimentalize, but they did not 
appeal to that desire for action, that eager thirst for 
incident and sensation which the awakening of a new 
life stirred ■ in the minds of the people. How this 
feeling was appealed to we have now to see. 


2—2 


III. ITALIAN AND ENGLISH NOVELS. 

Queen Elizabeth had scarcely completed her first 
measures for securing her throne and country from 
foreign interference, when the impetus was given, which 
resulted in a few years in the subjection of Literary 
England to the control of a foreign power. This impetus 
was given by the translation of Italian novels. In 1562 
appeared rimed versions of some of Boccaccio’s tales. 
In the same year was published Arthur Broke’s verse 
paraphrase of Bandello’s story of Romeus and Julietta. 
In 1565 came a translation of Ariosto’s Ariodanto and 
Ginevra. In the next year appeared sixty novels from 
Boccaccio under the title Paynters Palace of Pleasure , 
and this was followed in 1567 by a similar collection of 
34 novels from Bandello and Cinthio. Between the 
years 1567 and 1587 the favourite tale of Boccaccio 
called Filocopo went through several editions. About 
1576 came another collection of stories, entitled A petite 
Palace of. Pett'ie his pleasure. This list might be con¬ 
tinued much further 1 ; but enough has been said to show 

1 e.g. 

1576. Turberville’s Ten Tragieall Tales out of sundry Italians. 

1582. Whetstone’s Hcptameron ; containing Cin.hio’s tales. 

1583. The first volume of Belleforrest’s repository. 

1587. The Amorous Fiametta ; licensed by the Bishop of London. 

1397. Two tales out of Ariosto, etc. 


ITALIAN AND ENGLISH NOVELS. 21 

that during the first part of Elizabeth’s reign there was 
quite an inundation of Italian ‘ novels,’ if they may be so 
called, though the ‘novella’ was very different from 
what we understand by a novel in these days. These 
tales were circulated throughout the country. They 
were published in cheap, portable forms, got up in an 
attractive style, with ingenious titles that were sure to 
arouse curiosity or interest. They found their way into 
the homes of almost all classes, and rivalled the new 
Geneva Bible and the Revised Prayer-Book in popularity. 
The man who was ignorant of Boccaccio was regarded 
more out of the fashion than he would now be who 
knows nothing of Victor Hugo or Sir W. Scott. Not 
even the Arabian Nights surpass the popularity which 
the Ecatommithi of Cinthio once enjoyed. So much 
interest in this kind of literature was aroused that 
many made up their minds to read it in the original, and 
the teachers of Italian found scores of eager and apt 
scholars. In 1567 a Dictionary ‘for the better under¬ 
standing of Boccaccio, Petrarch and Dante ’ had already 
gone through three editions, and between 1550 and 1600 
four Italian Grammars were published. Every year 
numbers of copies of Bandello, Cinthio, the Decameron 
and similar books were brought over from Frankfort 
book-mart and found a ready sale at Stourbridge fair 
(the Cambridge students being eager purchasers pro¬ 
bably), or at the St Paul’s book-stalls. 

The significance of this demand for the newly- 
imported tales is not difficult to understand when the 
character of the ‘ Novella ’ is known. That which chiefly 
gave it favour was its popular nature. As Mr Symonds 1 
remarks : ‘ the Novella was in a special sense adapted to 
the public which during the age of the Despots grew up 
1 Renaissance in Italy, Vol. V. pp. 52, 53. 


22 


ITALIAN AND ENGLISH NOVELS. 


in Italy....Its qualities and its defects alike betray the as¬ 
cendancy of the bourgeois element....Literature produced 
to please the bourgeois must be sensible and positive; and 
its success will greatly depend upon the piquancy of its 
appeal to ordinary unidealized appetites.’ What is true 
of the Italian citizens of the age of the Despots is, to a 
modified degree, true of the Londoners of the Elizabethan 
age. The shop-keeper and the apprentice, as well as 
the merchant, the banker, and the student found some¬ 
thing that appealed to them in the tales of intrigue and 
adventure, of scandal and reprisal, of romance and 
mystery which had amused the leisure hours of the 
Florentine and the Paduan. This was the first time the 
people had had an opportunity of reading anything of 
the kind; the Decameron indeed had been known in 
England before, but only through such versions as 
Chaucer’s, and now the public was for the first time 
brought into direct contact with the sensationalism of 
Italian life. 

There was however an influential minority who, so 
far from looking with favour upon this rapid spread of 
interest in Southern literature, protested against it on 
the ground that it tended to undermine the public 
morality. Indeed their fear was well grounded, as any¬ 
one who knows the outrageous sins against all decency 
and purity committed by the Novellieri will confess. 
Sometimes the Puritans, or those who in this matter at 
least sympathized with them, were successful in suppress¬ 
ing some of the more objectionable publications, as 
when in 1619 the Archbishop of Canterbury issued an 
inhibition against the Decameron. But at first the 
Censors of the press seem to have winked at the circula¬ 
tion of the most licentious tales, and it was left for 
Roger Ascham and one or two other honest guardians 


ITALIAN AND ENGLISH NOVELS. 23 

of the public morals to lift up their voices in condemna¬ 
tion. Ascham 1 , writing in 1570, says that if he had his 
way he would burn them all: ‘ More evil is done by 
precepts of fond books, of late translated out of Italian 
into English, sold in every shop in London, commended 
by honest titles, the sooner to corrupt honest manners... 
There be more of these ungracious books set out in print 
these few months than have been seen in England many 
score years hence;... the Morte d' Arthur ...was bad 
enough, but these ten times worse, being*so subtle’;... 

‘ They think more of Petrarch and Boccaccio than of the 
Bible.’ He regards the tales as a source of Atheism: 
‘ One special point to be learnt in Italian books...to think 
nothing of God Himself’; and as tending to spread 
Roman Catholicism: ‘ More Papists be made by your 
merry books of Italy than by your earnest books of 
Louvain.’ His language is not a bit too strong. There 
is no doubt that these ‘ Italian Prints ’ are responsible 
for very much that makes some of our Elizabethan 
literature unreadable in these days, and for much that 
must remain as a blot upon its brightness even when due 
allowance is made for the difference in the manners of 
those days. It may be worth while to call attention to 
the contrast between this period and the preceding in 
this respect. Skelton, however coarse he might be, was 
not impure, but many of the Elizabethans are wantonly 
gross, and the cause of the difference is mainly the 
contact with Italian corruption. 

But on the other hand our literature owes to the 
introduction into England of these Norelle a triple debt 
of which Ascham was not aware, which, in fact, did not 
become manifest till after his death. 


1 Scholemaster , passim. 


24 ITALIAN AND ENGLISH NOVELS. 

In the first place they gave the earliest stimulus to 
novel writing. Previous to this time there had been no 
attempt at prose fiction worth speaking of» More’s 
Utopia is^an exception. The idea of writing fiction in 
narrative does not seem to have occurred to Englishmen 
until they had become familiar with the Novelle. But 
then began imitations, and we may safely say that the 
imitations were superior in some respects at least to the 
originals. John Lyly, who wrote his famous Euphues 
in 1579, is the man who bears the honour, of being the 
precursor of the race of English Novelists. Robert 
Greene was one of the most prolific and popular of those 
who followed him. Both had been ‘ Italianized ’ to a 
higher degree than most of their contemporaries, and the 
influence is apparent in almost all of their productions. 
Greene’s tales had immense popularity. Some of them 
ran through several editions, and even held their ground 
until the modern English novel had fairly come in to 
supersede them. Gabriel Harvey, who was no lover of 
Greene, grumbles at the favour they receive, and com¬ 
plains that they are driving out even the universally 
admired masterpieces of Italy: * Even Guicciardini’s 
silver history, and Ariosto’s golden cantoes grow out of 
request, and the Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia is not 
greene enough for queasie stomachs, but they must have 
Greene’s Arcadia'... Nash bears similar testimony : ‘glad 
was that printer that might be so blest to pay him dear 
for the very dregs of his wit.’ These novelettes were 
generally free from the worst blemishes of the Italian 
models, and sometimes, as in the case of Euphues , were 
written with a distinctly didactic purpose. Immense 
as is the distance which separates a Greene from a 
Thackeray we may therefore confess that as lovers of 
‘ light literature * of the better class, we owe a debt of 


ITALIAN AND ENGLISH NOVELS. 25 

gratitude to the former and his contemporaries for 
having pointed the way to the modern novel. 

The second obligation which English literature owes 
to that Italian influence which accompanied the transla¬ 
tion and imitation of the Novelle is the ^improvement of 
English prose writing,—the formation, in fact, of a new 
Prose. 

Sir Henry Blount was using a pardonable exag¬ 
geration when he said that to Lyly ‘our nation is in¬ 
debted for a new English.’ The first ph^e of the new 
style appeared in that peculiar kind of writing known 
as ‘ Euphuism,’ the characteristics of which are not 
badly described by William Webbe as ‘fit phrases, 
pithy sentences, gallant tropes, flowing speech, plain 
sense V Anyone who compares this kind of writing, as 
exhibited in Lyly, Lodge or Sidney, with the prose of 
Elyot, Latimer or of Robinson’s translation of the Utopia , 
recognizes the foreign element at once. Whatever was 
the chief influence which moulded the style of Euphnes % \ 
it is certain that the richness, the affectation, the 
imagery, the elegant finish of the prose-writing which 
obtained currency in Elizabeth’s reign were results of 
contact with Italy. But, like the poetry of Surrey and 
Wyatt, it was not a style that was ever likely to become 
really popular. It was* chiefly a Court fashion. Side 
by side with its refined intricacy existed the simple 
straightforward prose of the people. Yet even this was 
to some extent affected by the tendency to cultivate a 
correct and elegant way of writing. Hooker was no 
euphuist, but his stately periods may owe something to 
the suggestions of the easy-flowing sentences of Lyly. 

1 Discourse of English Poetrie. 

» Landmann, in his Euphuismus , considers'that the style was partly 
due to the example of the Spanish Guevara. 


26 


ITALIAN AND ENGLISH NOVELS. 


Bacon is free from affectation, but he may have un¬ 
consciously learnt in the school of Euphuism how to 
write lucidly. Certainly the influence of this school 
survived in what has been called the ‘ Poetical Prose ’ of 
the earlier Stuarts ; it is seen in the quaintness of Fuller, 
in the liveliness of Jeremy Taylor, in the magnificent 
sentences of Milton’s Areopcigitica, and in the ‘splendid 
pedantries * of Sir Thomas Browne. 

These two results, then, followed the introduction of 
the Novelle into our country—the creation of a prose 
fiction, and the commencement of a new prose style. 
But there was a third, far greater than these, and so 
important in its consequences, as well as permanent in 
its effect, that we shall be justified in referring its 
consideration to a special chapter. 


IV. OUR DRAMATISTS’ DEBTS. 


It has been asserted above that Lyly and Greene 
may be regarded as the precursors of the modern novel- 
writers. But it is necessary to guard this statement 
against misapprehension. Not for a full century and a 
half did the actual beginnings of our novel-literature (as 
distinguished from romances) appear, and the whole 
interval between Robert Greene and Samuel Richardson 
was barren of any serious attempt to form a prose fiction 
of life, manners and character. Popular as Pandosto 
and Menaphon and Perimedes were, they did not 
produce any development of the species of writing of 
which they and Euphues were the best known repre¬ 
sentatives. What was the reason of this ? 

It was because another species of writing had almost 
simultaneously arisen, which in a few years completely 
outbid the novelette in the competition for popularity, 
and received such an enthusiastic welcome, that there 
was no chance of its rival being properly attended to. 
This was the Drama. 

So much has been written upon the origin and 
growth of the English Drama that nothing need here be 
Said, beyond what is necessary to illustrate the part which 
Italy played in this new development. One statement 
will be sufficient to show the extraordinary growth of its 


28 


OUR DRAMATISTS’ DEBTS. 


literature, and it shall be that of Prynne, who in his 
Histrio-Mastix (published in 1633) observes:—‘Above 
40,boo play-books printed within these last two years, 
(as Stationers inform me) they being now more vendible 
than the choicest sermons.’ One remark may be offered, 
amongst many that occur, as giving a reason for the 
precedence which this form of composition took above 
every other in the popular favour, namely, that it 
satisfied, more than any other could do, that excitement, 
that desire for Incident, Adventure and Action, that love 
of sensationalism which so strongly characterized the 
Elizabethan age. 

Having prefaced so much, the question which we 
have to answer is—what had the Italian Novelle to do 
with the rise of the English Drama ? 

Every reader of Shakspere, however uncritical, is 
struck by the fact that the names of the Dramatis 
Personae in so many of his plays are Italian, and that 
the scene where the incidents occur is so often an 
Italian town. Knowing little of the conditions of the 
age in which Shakspere lived, and nothing of the history 
of Italian literature, he Wonders why this is so. He 
turns perhaps to the Introduction of the Clarendon 
Press copy which he happens to be reading, and dis¬ 
covers that the poet is indebted for the leading incident 
of the play to some Italian novel; this rouses his 
curiosity, he pursues his researches further, and even¬ 
tually finds that this Prince of Dramatists, so far from 
having invented out of his boundless imagination the 
stories which have delighted 1 the last three centuries, 
was indebted not only for names and scenes, but for 
many episodes and ideas, and sometimes for whole 
plots, to obscure tale-books imported from Venice and 
Florence. In his first surprise at this discovery his 


OUR dramatists’ debts. 29 

opinion of Shakspere inclines to fall somewhat; he 
begins to wonder what would be left, if the borrowed 
elements were taken away; in that case, he thinks, we 
should have no Othello , no Romeo and Juliet , and 
probably no Hamlet; we should lose the Merchant of 
Venice ,- Much Ado about Nothing , and Measure for 
Measui'e; we should miss much that gives vivacity and 
interest to the Tempest , the Taming of the Shrew , and 
Twelfth Night; we should have to give up more or 
less of the Two Gentlemen of Vero?ia, All's well that 
ends well , and the Comedy of Errors . All these plays, 
he finds, are derived either directly or indirectly, either 
in the whole plot, or in part of it, from translations of 
Italian novels. He cannot help imagining where Shak¬ 
spere would have gone for his material, if these novels 
had never come into his hands. Would he have drama¬ 
tised the Arthurian legends ? Would he have been 
obliged to make the most of dry chronicles, homely 
ballads, and ale-house tales ? Or would he have sought 
stuff for his genius to fashion into shape in the stories 
that were getting abroad about the wonderful lands of 
the far West ? It may be idle to speculate in this way, 
but it is most important to recognize the immense 
obligation Shakspere owes to Italy. It is not necessary 
to make any apology for him ; it was the best thing he 
could do perhaps. He could hardly help doing it. 
Italy fascinated him as it did many others. Here he 
found in rich abundance the very best material for 
tragedy and romantic comedy. Our opinion of his 
powers is not lessened. All poets borrow. Their great¬ 
ness consists not in inventing the form, not in creating 
the skeleton, but in filling it with life. 

What Shakspere did all the other dramatists of his 
times did also. In fact it was quite the orthodox 


30 


OUR DRAMATISTS’ DEBTS. 


method of working up a play to start from a novel. 
This custom commenced almost simultaneously with 
the translation of the Novelle . Arthur Brooke in 1562 
says that he had seen the argument of Romeus and 
Jidietta set forth on the stage; but the earliest known 
play derived from a Novella is the Tancred and Gis- 
inunda which appeared in 1568. A merely cursory 
examination of the contemporaries and successors of 
Shakspere will show how much they drew from the 
same source. Thus,—nine of Beaumont and Fletcher’s 
dramas have their scenes laid in Italy, four of Mas¬ 
singer’s, four of Ford’s, and in all these the ‘ Personae ’ 
are, of course, Italians. Ben Jonson in the first draft of 
his Every man in his Humour gave Italian names to 
the characters. Shakspere himself hints at the pre¬ 
valence of the custom with perhaps a touch of satire 1 : 
‘ His name’s Gonzago : the story is extant and writ in 
choice Italian.’ Some of the most powerful of the 
Elizabethan tragedies were based on these tales. Webster 
worked up the horrors he found in Bandello, and pro¬ 
duced his Duchess of Amalfi. Some of the novels 
were especial favourites; thus the story of Belfegor as 
told both by Macchiavelli and Straparola was the source 
of no less than three plays—Dekker’s If it be not good , 
the Divil is in it , Ben J.onson’s The Devil is an Ass, 
and John Wilson’s Belfegor . Even in the later Stuart 
period this source was occasionally reverted to. In 
Sir W. D.avenant’s Platonic Lovers the names are all 
Italian, and his too is the Just Italian. In Farquhar’s 
The Twin Rivals , which came out in 1702, there is a 
recommendation to a poet in search of a plot to ‘read 
the Italian ’ as well as the Spanish plays, and Dryden 


1 Hamlet III. ii. 


OUR dramatists’ debts. 31 

in 1678 obtained some of the incidents for his indecent 
Limberham from a novel of Cinthio’s. 

If we now put the question ‘what was the element 
of attraction that so strongly drew our dramatists to 
Italian sources?’ we shall have no difficulty in deter¬ 
mining the answer. Italy was at that time the home of 
the Heroic and the Tragic. It was, more than any 
other, the land of Adventure, Intrigue, Sensationalism, 
Scandal, Crime. The courts were centres of refinement, 
gallantry and subtlety; the Academies were nurseries 
of learning, but also of evil theories; the towns were 
full of turbulent life, and restless activity; the streets 
were constant scenes of strife and assassination. Mocking 
Atheism went side by side with devout Catholicism, 
cynical indifference watched the gorgeous processions 
of the pomp-loving Cardinals, while eager place-hunting 
and passionate Revenge dogged their footsteps with 
the dagger and bowl of poison ever at hand, and poets 
all the time went on singing dainty melodies of Love 
and . Beauty. All this was known in England. The 
newest intrigue at the Vatican—-the last scandal of the 
Court of Ferrara—the latest murder at Florence—the 
news on the Rialto—all this was eagerly looked for by 
those who made it their business to purvey exciting 
stimulants to the imagination of the public. For them 
no fiction could have charms equal to the wondrous 
facts of Southern life. None lent themselves more 
readily to stage adaptation. None could possibly be 
better subjects for Tragedy. Poets went over to Italy 
and came back full of poetic fervour and tragic sentiment. 
Those who did not go were almost equally affected by 
the contagion. In addition to the Tales they had the 
histories of Macchiavelli, of Guicciardini, and Contarini, 
in which they saw the life of Italy reflected. The very 


32 


OUR DRAMATISTS DEBTS. 


fact that most of the poets only knew Italy by hearsay 
helped to give a weird, romantic glamour to their 
conceptions. What went on in England was quite 
prosaic in comparison. True, there were events of 
romantic interest, such as those connected with the 
names of Mary Queen of Scots, and Amy Robsart, but 
no Elizabethan dramatist dared even allude to these. 
But in using Italian materials there was no fear, and 
the playwrights had free license to avail themselves of 
whatever would suit their purpose. The use which they 
made of their opportunity was not always such as will 
commend itself to the taste of the Nineteenth Century. 
They seemed to revel sometimes in depicting disgusting 
scenes, and in trying to rival, in sanguinary and revolting 
details, the horrors of such productions as Cinthio’s 
Orbecche. But we must remember that they were only 
reproducing what actually went on in the land that 
fascinated them, and we may be thankful on the one 
hand that in England they could find nothing sufficiently 
horrible to inspire their awful Muse, and on the other 
that the really noble tragedians of this period, while 
retaining what was necessary for the completion of the 
plot and the full expression of the ideas, rejected in most 
cases those unnecessary accessories which were introduced 
to pamper the depraved taste which looked to Italy for 
the Police News of the day. 

It follows from these considerations, and from the 
intercourse with Italy that has been already noticed, 
that the Drama would be likely to be influenced in other 
ways than merely by the Novelle supplying plots. 
There are several reasons for believing that other 
developments and characteristics of the Elizabethan and 
Stuart Drama were more or less of foreign importation. 

We know that as early as 1565 Ariosto’s Comedy 


OUR dramatists’ debts. 


33 


Gli Suppositi was translated. In 1578 a company of 
Italian Players was in England and performed before 
the Queen. Many traces exist in the Elizabethan 
writers proving their familiarity with Italian acting. 
Ben Jonson 1 mentions the ‘extemporal plays/ which 
Whetstone 8 also remarks upon, observing that ‘the 
Comedians of Ravenna are not tied to any written 
device.’ Middleton, as is clear from his description of 
their acting in the Spanish Gipsy, had seen players of 
the same kind. Shakspere notices them, and Kyd 8 says, 

“ The Italian tragedians are so sliarp of wit 
That in one hour’s meditation 
They would perform anything in action.” 

‘ Masks ’ had by this time become common, and were 
performed with great splendour, but they were still 
recognized as a distinctly foreign amusement: 

“ Therefore I’ll have Italian masks by night 
Sweet speeches, comedies and pleasing shows 4 .” 

Some of the more conservative onlookers did not 
altogether approve of this taste for outlandish novelties 

“All eyes behold with eager deep desire 
These enterludes, these newe Italian sports 
And every gawde that glads the mind of men 0 .” 

But some of the most talented poets saw in these a new 
and inviting outlet for their efforts, and Jonson, Lyly, 
Chapman and Fletcher reproduced with considerable 
success the kind of pageant which had long amused the 
Milanese and Florentines at holiday-time. 

Italian Comedy never seems to have been much 
known in England, but indirectly it had some effect. 
Massinger drew from it, and D’Israeli supposes that his 

i The Case is Altered. 3 Heptameron. 8 Spanish Tragedy. 

* Marlowe, Ediv. II. I. i. 8 Gascoigne, Steele Glass. 

LE BAS. 


3 


34 


OUR DRAMATISTS’ debts. 


Empiric came from the same source as Moli£re’s Mtdecin , 
-—namely the familiar Dottore of Southern Comedy, 
another of the stock characters of which is imitated by 
Gosson in his Captain Mario. We cannot forget too 
that to Italy we owe nearly all the familiar figures of our 
Pantomime,—the Zany, Harlequin, Pantaloon; Punch, 
Mountebank, Scaramouch and Columbine are all Italians 
by name and nature. The ballet came from Italy, so 
did ‘Puppet-plays,’ and it was in Italy that women first 
began to act on the stage. 

There was one tendency visible during the reign o( 
Elizabeth, which, had it been stronger, might have 
materially affected the character of our drama. This 
was the influence of Classic example and Academic 
rules. Some of the leading critics of that time thought 
that the model of the Classic drama ought to be strictly 
adhered to. Among these were Sir P. Sidney and 
Whetstone, who, in his preface to the play Promos and 
Cassandra , shows his preference for the Classical over 
the Romantic method. In Comedy Plautus and Terence 
were considered the best examples, and in England, as 
in Italy, numerous imitations of their comedies were 
produced,—a fashion which was perhaps encouraged by 
the habit of producing plays at the Universities. The 
same tendency to be guided by the examples of antiquity 
showed itself in the attempts made by some purists to 
naturalize the hexameter, and in the protests made by 
men like Ascham, Puttenham and Milton against the use 
of rime. Happily however for the development of a 
true English literature, these attempts failed for the 
most part. Though well-meant, they were contrary to 
nature. It was putting new wine into old bottles to 
clothe and hamper the bursting energy of English life 
with antique methods and conventional measures. The 


OUR DRAMATISTS’ DEBTS. 


35 


impetuosity and careless freedom of the early dramatists 
refused to submit to the dictation of their elders. And 
thus it was that there arose the grandest development 
of all our literature of this period,—the Romantic Drama, 
of which Marlowe is said to be the * Father,’ but of 
which Shakspere is the life and soul. This is a peculiarly 
English growth, and its origin is to be sought rather in 
the geiieral conditions of the time, than in any special 
Italian or other influence. Italy had nothing to com¬ 
pare with the Romantic Comedy of Shakspere. It is 
not indeed unlikely, as an eminent critic has remarked 1 , 
that the Elizabethan dramatists received, unconsciously 
perhaps, ideas from the Commedia delF arte , which 
Shakspere formed into shape. This branch of Italian 
literature, which at the outset was distinctly popular, 
was in his time subject to the influence of the Academies. 
But in England there were no such Academies, and the 
dramatists had nothing to prevent them from seizing 
and adapting for their own purposes whatever useful 
elements, they found in this Commedia. Chiefly it was 
in the ‘ variety of effect which it was capable of producing 
with a series .of characters more or less fixed, so as to 
preclude all deeper characterization*’ that its value lay. 
It has been already shown what an impression was 
made in England by the improvisations of Italian 
players. No wonder then if Shakspere, who probably 
came up to London just at the time when this was 
first observed, soon turned his attention to consider the 
possibility of using the idea to produce something quite 
different. A few years probably before he brought out 
his first play, a well-known Florentine poet was attempt¬ 
ing to strike out a new line in what he called Farsa, a 
kind of dramatic composition which he thus describes : 

1 Ward, in Hist. Dram. Lit., passim. 3 lb. 

3—2 


36 


OUR dramatists' debts. 


1M The Farce is a third species, newly framed, 

Twixt Tragedy and Comedy. She profits 
By all the breadth and fulness of both forms, 

Shuns all their limitations 1 .” 

This * sweet country lass/ as he was pleased to call 
the new-comer whom he was trying to introduce to the 
people, was therefore contemporaneous with the rise of 
the Romantic Comedy in England. The way had been 
led by Lyly and Greene, whose fame rests as much upon 
their dramas as upon their novelettes. Lyly’s plays 
were quite a new departure, and are rightly called 
‘ Court Comedies.’ Greene too, while imitating the 
Italians > wrote plays that were distinctly original in cast, 
and one authority gives it as his opinion that ‘the 
Romantic Play—the English Farsa—may be called in 
a great measure his discovery.’ Lastly came that 
wonderful ‘warbler’ of ‘woodnotes wild/ who, finding 
this ‘ sweetest prettiest country lass ’ waiting for a lover 
and a champion, made her the ‘bride-elect of Shakspere’s 
genius’ and ‘placed her side by side with Attic Tragedy 
and Comedy upon the supreme throne of Art.’ 

A few words will suffice to trace the later influence 
of Italy upon our Drama. From 1630 to 1660 it is not 
easy to find anything worth noticing, except, of course 
an occasional borrowing of some Italian story. There 
was no fresh influence exerted, and simply for this 
reason—that the age of the Seicentisti had commenced 
in Italy, from which no good thing was to be expected. 
But with the Restoration there began a new movement 
in English dramatic circles. Then it- was that the 
Opera first found a home in England. In 1659 Evelyn 
makes an entry in his diary to the effect that he ‘ went 
to see the new Opera, after the Italian way, in recitative 

1 Quoted in Symonds, Shaksfcre's rvedtccssors. 


OUR DRAMATISTS’ DEBTS. 37 

music and sceanes.’ Sir Will. Davenant,was the enter¬ 
prising dramatist to whom the introduction of this latest 
Italian novelty was due. 

“ I would have introduced heroique story 
In stilo recitativo” 

says the musician in his Playhouse to Let. But the 
opera proper was a long time in taking root here. As 
early as 1594 it had made its first appearance in Italy 
when Ottario Rinuccini brought out his Dafne } and it 
was not really established in England till the beginning 
of the eighteenth century. Even then it did not meet 
with a very cordial reception. In 1706 John Dennis 
says ‘(The operas) drive out poetryif an opera is to 
infuse generous sentiment...it must be writ with force, 
...but this is incompatible with music, especially in so 
masculine a language as ours.’ This however was not the 
general opinion. John Dryden in his preface to Albion 
and Albanius (1685) says: ‘It is almost needless to 
speak of that noble language in which this musical 
drama was first invented and performed. All who are 
conversant in the Italian cannot but observe that it is 
the softest, the sweetest, the most harmonious, not only 
of any modern tongue, but even beyond any of the 
learned.’ He goes on to confess his own debt to it: 
‘ I may own some advantages which are not common to 
every writer, such as are the knowledge of the Italian and 
French languages, and the being conversant with some 
of the best performances in this kind, which have 
furnished me with such variety of measures.’ 

His allusion to the French language leads us to the 
last remarks which it is necessary to make on the subject 
of the drama. With the Restoration, French manners, 
language and literature had entered England, and soon 


OUR DRAMATISTS’ DEBTS. 


38 

became a part of cultured life as they had never done 
before. Owing to the genius of the French stage at 
this period, and the utter poverty of the Italian, it was 
inevitable that the latter should give way, and forfeit the 
supremacy which it had hitherto held. There was not 
a single dramatist in Italy to compare with Racine, 
Corneille or Moli^re. No wonder then that the Restora¬ 
tion Dramatists turned to France for inspiration. It 
was partly in imitation of Corneille that Dryden made 
rime the vehicle of tragedy, although he mentioned (as 
instances of the same thing) the ‘ Spanish and Italian 
tragedies, all writ in rime 1 .’ Otway, even when dealing 
with an episode of Italian history in his Venice Preserved , 
takes it from a French book, and in another play closely 
imitates Racine. Finally the century was closed and 
Italian influence practically ended with the rise of the 
new Prose Comedy of Manners, under Wycherley and 
Congreve, who derived their inspiration from Moli&re. 

1 Dedication to the Rival Ladies , 1663. 


V. SIGNS OF THE TIMES. 

As might be expected, the results of contact with 
the life of Italy were far more extensive than has yet 
been indicated. An immense impulse was given to the 
study of Italian literature of all kinds—history, philo¬ 
sophy, travels \ as well as poetry and fiction. No one 
was considered accomplished in Elizabeth’s Court unless 
he could quote Ariosto, or garnish his speech with 
Italian proverbs. No poetry was esteemed in literary 
circles unless it followed Italian precedents in sentiment 
and versification. Poets were fond of showing their 
acquaintance with the language of Romance by insert¬ 
ing Italian words in their verses. Those were con¬ 
sidered the best courtiers who took most pains to carry 
out the teaching of Castiglione’s ‘Cbrtigiano’—their 
‘ Hand-book of the Perfect Gentleman a treatise which 
had much to do with the forming of that school of 
elaborate politeness and gentility which Sir Walter 

1 In 1597 Abraham Hartwell translated a work on the Congo, written 
by Filippo Pigafetta in 1591. 

In 1594 Wolf translated a book on the philosophy of Duelling. 

Before 1611 a translation of Contarini’s Commonwealth of Venice had 
been published. 

Even Spanish and Arabian fiction first reached England through Italian 
channels ; e.g. in 1570 Sir T. North translated from the Italian version of 
the fable book Calilah i Dummah, and in 161 a Don Quixote was translated 
from the same language. 


40 


SIGNS OF THE TIMES. 


Raleigh and Sir Philip Sidney represented so welk 
The prose-writers, as well as the versifiers, betrayed the 
predominant influence; men like Nash and Gabriel 
Harvey took pride in showing off their foreign accom¬ 
plishments ; thus in Nash we come across such words 
as ‘ Bravamente/ ‘ Soldatescha bravura; ’ the more sober 
Bishop Jewel speaks of the Pope as ‘ Cavezzo della 
chiesa/ and Bacon alludes to him as ‘ Padre Commune/ 
The terms ‘ Aretinism/ ‘ Macchiavellian/ ‘ Florentine/ 
the titles clarissimo, magnifico, cavaliero, the phrases 
‘ ragioni di stato/ ‘ chiaro oscuro ’ and ‘ mezzo tinto ’ 
became common currency. So great was the demand 
for a smattering of Italian, that John Florio was led 
to publish hand-books which would enable would-be 
Italianizers to pick up a little show of knowledge with 
the least possible amount of trouble. These books 
contained ‘ Frutes...of divers but delightsome tastes to 
the tongues of Italians and Englishmen/../ merrie pro- 
verbes, wittie sentences, and golden sayings/...‘a perfect 
Introduction to the Italian and English tongues/ As a 
natural consequence of all this, the language became 
enriched (or, according to some polluted) by the addi¬ 
tion of many new terms to our vocabulary 1 . Several 
1 e.g. 


balcony 

carnival 

farce (?) 

manifesto 

sonnet 

baluster 

carousal 

fresco 

motto 

stanza 

bandit 

casemate 

gallery 

mountebank 

stucco 

bevy 

casque 

gazette 

moustache 

umbrella 

bravo 

cassock 

gondola 

opera 

virtuoso 

bust 

cavalcade 

grotto 

palette 

vista 

canto 

cavalier 

harlequin (?) 

pantaloon 

volcano 

caper 

charlatan 

lava 

pedant 

zany 

caprice 

ditto 

macaroni 

piazza 


capuchin 

duel 

madonna 

scaramouch 


carbine 

duet 

madrigal 

seraglio 



N.B. All these words occur in writers of the Elizabethan and Stuart 


SIGNS OF THE TIMES. 


41 

Italian words which are now thoroughly Anglicized 
entered the language during this period. A still larger 
number however of those which were then introduced 
failed to gain a permanent place, and are only to be 
found in works of the sixteenth and seventeenth cen¬ 
turies 1 . It was not without reason that Joseph Hall 
vented his satire on this tendency to overload the 
language with 

—Terms Italianate, 

Big sounding sentences, and words of st^e.” 

Ascham and Wilson both complained of the ‘strange 
words...which do make all things dark/ and lamented 
that ‘some seek so far outlandish English that they 
forget altogether their mother’s language.’ But their 
remonstrances fell unheeded on the ears of men who 
were in love with everything Italian; ‘Tut, saies our 
English Italians, the finest witts our climate sends 
foorth are but drie-brain’d dolts in comparison of other 
countries; whom, if you interrupt, they will tell you of 
Petrarch, Tasso, Celiano with an infinite number of 
others 8 .’ 

The Universities seem to have shared the infection ; 
Gabriel Harvey, describing the studies practised at 
Cambridge in 1580, says that the Italians are more read 

periods. Others may be found in Skeat’s Etymological Dictionary , 
pp. 751 — 757. Besides those derived directly from the Italian, there are 
several which were introduced from other languages through the Italian, 
e.g. caviare, candy, magazine, etc. 

1 e.g. 

agraste capriccio galligaskins punto 

armigero cullion malgrado retrait 

ballat (=ballad) duello piastre saffo 

capreold 

and many more to be found in Spenser, Shakspere and the Elizabethan 
Dramatists. 

* Robert Greene. 


42 


SIGNS OF THE TIMES. 


than Aristotle: ‘You can’t step into a scholar’s study 
but you shall find (these modern authors) on the table; 
...Macchiayelli a great man, Castilio of no small reputa¬ 
tion, Petrarch and Boccaccio in every man’s mouth,... 
over many acquainted with Unico Aretino ; the French 
and Italian when so highly regarded as scholars.’ 

The great Italian poets and critics (especially Bembo 
and Politian among the latter) were on all sides looked 
up to as the models of excellence, and as being on an 
equal footing with those of antiquity. Harvey judges 
his friend Spenser’s Eclogues by the standard of 
Ariosto’s works, and recommends him to take Macchia- 
velli, Aretino and Bibiena as his examples. Sir P. 
Sidney satirised the violation of the Unities of Time 
and Place by the English dramatists, and considered 
that the Italian models ought to be strictly copied. 
The same critic objected to Spenser’s ‘ framing of his 
style to an old rustic langqage,’ simply on the ground 
that ‘neither Theocritus in Greek, Vergil in Latin nor 
Sanazzar in Italian did affect it.’ Sidney himself is one 
of the best instances we could give of the control exer¬ 
cised by Italy over the cultured men of England. In 
his ‘Arcadia’ he imitated Sanazzaro not only in the 
general ideas and structure of the work, but even in the 
versification, attempting to copy the sdrucciolo rimes. 
Even Spenser, who gave freer play to his own ideas, and 
refused to be a slave to conventionalities; was at least in 
his earlier years guided by the same masters. ‘ His 
sonnets are Italian, his odes embody the Platonic philo¬ 
sophy of the Italians; the stately structure of the Pro- 
thalamium and Epithalamium is a rebuilding of the 
Canzone, and his Eclogues repeat the manner of 
Petrarch’s minor Latin poems V 

1 Symonds in loc„ 


VI. ENGLISH AND ITALIAN EPICS. 

The name of Spenser suggests the next division of 
our investigation. 

It would have been passing strange if, while sonnets, 
novels, pastorals and comedies from Italy were produc¬ 
ing a fertile harvest of literature of the same kind in 
England, there had been nothing to correspond to the 
magnificent masterpieces of the Cinque Cento—the 
* Orlando Furioso * and the * Gerusalemme Liberata.’ 
The former of these grand poems was first published in 
1516 and soon attained a European reputation. Every¬ 
where the name and fame of ‘Tuscan Arioste’ became 
familiar. His poem was printed in small handy volumes 
so that it might be the pocket companion of the traveller; 
it was customary to learn whole stanzas by heart; the 
gondoliers of Venice sung his verses as they plied their 
boats, and the apprentices of London vaguely associated 
him with all that was splendid and romantic. The 
complete poem was first translated into English by Sir 
John Harrington in 1591, in ‘ Heroick verse ’; extracts 
indeed had been rendered as early as 1565, but there is 
nothing to prove that previous to 1591 any worthy 
attempt had been made to put Ariosto within the reach 
Of the generality of English readers. 


44 ENGLISH AND ITALIAN EPICS. 

The ‘poet of conduct and decorum/ Torquato Tasso, 
published his ‘ Gerusalemme’ in 1581, and, as far as we 
know, the first translation, consisting only of 5 cantos, 
was by R. Carew in 1594, and the whole poem by Fair¬ 
fax in 1600. 

Thus a period of sixty-five years elapsed between 
the publication of Ariosto’s great work, and that of 
Tasso’s. It is a coincidence worth calling attention to 
that almost exactly the same length of time elapsed 
between the two Epic poems which occupy such con¬ 
spicuous places in the English literature of the sixteenth 
and seventeenth centuries—the Fairy Queen of Edmund 
Spenser, and the Paradise Lost of John Milton. Is it 
pushing the.analogy too far to fancy that there was a 
further correspondence, and that, as the poet of the 
Elizabethan age took the romantic Ariosto for his model, 
while admiring the recent genius of Tasso, so the poet 
of the Commonwealth took the lofty Tasso for an ex¬ 
ample, while acknowledging the power of the earlier 
Ariosto ? However this may be, it is certain that 
Spenser and Milton must be considered together, as 
having been the two men among all the hundreds of 
miscellaneous writers and all the scores of talented 
‘makers’ of their times, who were most effectually 
moved by the inspiration coming from the ‘ Orlando ’ 
and the ‘Jerusalem.’ All admired these writings, many 
imitated them, many stole from them ; a few produced 
really good copies of their ideas and pictures, but only 
these two succeeded in handing down to posterity, in 
poems which are prodigies of genius, the fragranCy of 
the southern influence which was about them when they 
wrote. In fact it almost seems as if the minor poets, 
conscious of their inferiority, purposely refrained from 
attempting to emulate the feats of those two giants of 


ENGLISH AND ITALIAN EPTCS. 


45 

the Italian Renaissance, and thus left the field clear 
for the only men who were capable of equalling, if not 
surpassing them. The ‘ smaller ’ men occupied them¬ 
selves with the smaller kinds of poetry; they produced 
innumerable performances of the lyric and pastoral kind, 
but seldom aspired to the epic. Spenser and Milton 
on the other hand were both above the ‘ smaller’ poetry, 
and were conscious of it. Though they gave way to the 
fashion of their times, and wrote eclogues and sonnets, 
they felt that this was not their vocation. Spenser was 
dissatisfied with the * small ’ writing that was so much 
in vogue ; he was no lover of euphuistic pedantry or 
foreign affectation; he longed to produce something 
that should be majestic in simplicity and earnest in 
purpose. In the same way Milton’s soul rose far above 
the petty conceits, the far-fetched trivialities which 
characterised the poetry of the early Stuarts,—the 
poetry ‘ that flows at waste from the pen of some vulgar 
amorist, or the trencher fury of a rhyming parasite,’ and 
sought satisfaction for his yearning genius in an epic 
which should soar out of the domains of a Conventional 
Cupid, and rise to the heights of the 

“Immutable, Immortal, Infinite, 

Eternal King.” 

It was but natural that, with such thoughts as these, 
Spenser and Milton should be attracted by the two 
poets who had lately arisen in Italy to cultivate the 
■stately muse of Virgil and Dante, and that they regarded 
Ariosto-and Tasso as models worthy of imitation. Let 
us hear their own testimony. Spenser, writing to Sir 
W. Raleigh to expound the object of his Fairy Queen, 
says: 

“I hare followed all the antique poets historical!: first Homer, who in 


ENGLISH AND ITALIAN EPICS. 


4 6 

the persons of Agamemnon and Ulysses hath ensampled a good govemour 
and a vertuous man,...then Virgil, whose like intention was to do in the 
person of Aeneas: after him Ariosto comprised them both in his Orlando: 
and lately Tasso discovered them again.” 

Here Spenser evidently regards the last named poets as 
on an equal footing with the great epic writers of anti¬ 
quity. From Gabriel Harvey we further learn that 
Spenser had set before him as his deliberate aim to 
‘overgo’ the Orlando Furioso in his ‘Elvish Queen.’ 

So much for Spenser’s own acknowledgment of the 
debt he owed to Italy. But Miiton is far more explicit 
and interesting in the account he has left us of thfe 
thoughts that Tasso inspired him with, and the following 
extracts from this account will be sufficient to show that 
however much meaning may be assigned to the state¬ 
ment, made to Dryden in his latter days, that in writing 
the Paradise Lost ‘Spenser was his original,’ the first 
suggestions to compose some such epic came partly, at 
least, from the Italians whom he loved so well. He 
says: 

“In the private Academies of Italy...I began to assent...to an inward 
prompting...that I might perhaps leave something so written, to after 
times, that they should not willingly let it die....I applied myself to that 
resolution which Ariosto followed...to fix all the industry and art I could 
unite to the adorning of my native tongue.” (He mused what to attempt—) 
“whether that epic form whereof the 2 poems of Homer and those other 
two of Virgil and Tasso, are a diffuse, and the book of Job a brief 
model....And lastly what king or knight...might be chosen in whom to 
lay the pattern of the Christian hero. And as Tasso gave to a prince of 
Italy his choice...etc. 1 ” 

It is surely significant that it was in Italy that he first 
distinctly conceived the idea of an epic as his life’s work, 
and that it was to an Italian, his friend Giovanni Dio- 
dati, that he first communicateid the idea. 

When we proceed to examine the poems themselves, 

1 Milton, Reason of Church Government . 


ENGLISH AND ITALIAN EPICS. 


47 

to see what witness they give as to the source of inspira¬ 
tion, we find abundant proof that the Italian epics were 
vividly present to the minds of the English poets. 

We shall mention a few of the most striking of these 
proofs. To take Spenser first: although the general 
design of the Fairy Queen may be due, as has been 
suggested, to a French work 1 ; yet its style shows unmis- 
takeably a following of Ariosto, and the stanza in which 
it is written is probably a modification of that poet’s 
f ottava rima.’ " If he derives much from the Arthurian 
legends, he derives still more from the Tuscan’s versifi¬ 
cation of the Charlemagne Romance. If the Red Cross 
Knight and Una are the author’s own ideas, Archimago 
and Duessa are borrowed from Italy. The allegory 
indeed is, almost throughout, his own, but incidents, 
personages, illustrations are frequently taken from the 
rich stores of his foreign models. For instance that 
musical stanza in the last canto of Bk. II. in which is 
described the concert of all kinds of melodious sounds, 
where 

—“consorted in one harmony, 

Birds voices, instruments, winds, waters, all agree,” 

is taken from Tasso, and at the very outset of the poem 
we discover an imitation of Ariosto, in the announce¬ 
ment that he is about to 

—“sing of knights and ladies gentle deeds,” 

and that 

‘‘Fierce wars and faithful loves shall moralize my song,” 
passages which are suggested by 

“Le donne, i cavalier, l’anne, gli amori, 

Le cortesie, l’audaci imprese io canto*.” 


1 Le libre de droit (formes , pub. 1488. 


* Orlando Furioso, f. i. 


ENGLISH AND ITALIAN EPICS. 


48 

Sometimes he candidly acknowledges his debts, as when 
he mentions 

—“that same water of Ardenne, 

The which Rinaldo drank in happy hour. 

Described by that famous Tuscan pen.” 

In Milton’s case the resemblances are not so frequent 
or obvious, but there is no mistake about their being 
there. His choice of blank verse was certainly a devia¬ 
tion from the example of Tasso, yet in his Preface to 
the Paradise Lost he gives as one apology for not using 
what was then the common vehicle for poetry ‘ that not 
without cause some both Italian and Spanish poets of 
prime note have rejected rhyme both in longer and 
shorter works.’ Nor can it be said that in the charac¬ 
terization of his Personae—as, for instance, Beelzebub, 
Michabl, Gabriel,—any certain marks of non-originality 
can be pointed out. These are peculiarly Milton’s own 
creations. But in almost every book there are passages, 
which, while stamped with the charm of Milton’s inimi¬ 
table descriptive power, betray at the same time the 
incorporation of famous ‘tit-bits’ of Ariosto and Tasso ; 
e.g. the beautiful description of Eve’s bower: 

< —“ On either .side 

Acanthus, and each odorous bushy shrub 
Fenced up the verdant wall; each beauteous flower, 

Iris all hues, roses and jessamin 

Reared high their flourish’d heads between, and wrought 
Mosaick; underfoot the violet, 

Crocus and hyacinth, with rich inlay 

Broider’d the ground, more colour’d than with stone 

Of costliest emblem 1 .” 

This is just in the style of the rich word-painting in 
which Tasso loves to indulge. 

Again, in the description of the single combat 


1 F. I.. Bk. iv. 


a P. L. Bk. vi. 


ENGLISH AND ITALIAN EPICS. 


49 

between Satan and Michael, Milton proves, that how¬ 
ever much he despised that idea of Epic poetry which 
considered wars to be 

—“the only argument heroick,” 

and admired most 

—“chief mastery to dissect 
With long and tedious havock fabled knights 
In battles feign’d 1 ,” 

yet he was not insensible to the charm of that military 
and chivalrous ideal of life with which even the sternness 
of Puritanism had something in common. 

Some few passages may be instanced as close imita¬ 
tions,—occasionally almost verbal translations from the 
Italian, thus, the passage 

“What though the field be lost? 

All is not lost; th’ unconquerable will, 

And study of revenge, immortal hate, 

And courage never to submit or yield”—etc.* 

is from Tasso IV. 15. 

The striking lines in which he describes the Limbo, 
where are found 

“Both all things vain, and all who in vain things 
Built their fond hopes of glory or lasting fame,” etc.* 

may be compared, almost line for line, with Ariosto’s 
description of the Valley of Vain Things : 

“Le lacrime e i sospiri degli amanti, 

L’ inutil tempo chi si perde a giuoco 
E 1 ’ ozio lungo d’ uomini ignoranti, 

Vani disegni che non han mai loco, 

I vani desideri sono tanti, 

Che la piu parte ingombran di quel loco; 

Ci6 che in somma quaggiii perdesti mai, 

IA su salendo ritrovar potrai 4 .” 


* P. L. Bk. IX. 

* P. L. Bk. 1. 
LE BAS. 


4 


* P. L. Bk. hi. 

4 Orl. Fur. xxxiv. 75. 


50 


ENGLISH AND ITALIAN EPICS. 


Nor was his account of the sympathy of the angels in 
man’s woes 1 written in unmindfulness of Ariosto’s 

“Come gli ascoltar 1 * anime sante, 

Dipinte di pietade il viso pio, 

Tutte miraro il sempitemo Amante 2 .”— 

He borrows also from Ariosto the idea of the Devil 
inventing artillery, and compares the hosts of Satan to 
those who ‘jousted in Aspramont.’ 

But it is possible that Milton owed more than all 
this to Italy. In 1617 a kind of Mystery Play in five 
acts entitled Adamo was produced by the Italian poet- 
Andreini, in which Adam and Eve, the hatred shown 
by Lucifer and the Devils, the Fall, the characters of 
Hunger and Death, the sympathy with man of the 
unfallen Angels, and many other points similar to those 
occurring in the Paradise Lost appear. It is said that 
Rolli, when in London in the beginning of the 
eighteenth century, heard that Milton, after taking part 
in a representation of this play of Adamo , thought of 
making a tragedy of it. Voltaire makes an addition to 
this account, saying that Milton actually composed 
a part of the projected tragedy; he heard it from several 
Englishmen, who had themselves heard it from Milton’s 
daughter. Whatever we may think of this story, (and 
we are at least sure that Milton’s original idea was.to 
treat the subject dramatically), it is likely enough that 
his knowledge of Andreini’s play led him to decide upon 
the theme which he finally adopted for his epic. And 
if this is so we have here another instance of the way in 
which Italian authors supplied English poets with the 
materials for their very best performances. 

Apart from the Paradise Lost there are various 

2 Orl. pur. XIV. 74. 


1 P. L. BW. x. 


ENGLISH AND ITALIAN EPICS. 51 

indications of Milton’s attachment to Italy. In his 
treatise on Education he recommends that boys should 
learn Italian, which he considers might be ‘ easily ’ done 
‘at any odd hour.’ To two of the sweetest lyrics that 
the English language owns he gave Italian titles. He 
wrote sonnets in Italian, and several of his shorter 
poems bear traces of the Italian manner. 

It would be wrong to leave Spenser and Milton 
without stating, at least briefly, the immense distance 
which separated them from the Italian authors as 
regards their purpose in writing. The chief aim of 
Ariosto and Tasso was to amuse, and they were not 
very careful about any other end ; the chief aim of 
Spenser and Milton was to instruct, and they always 
kept this end in mind. ‘To fashion a gentleman or 
noble person in vertuous and gentle discipline,’ says the 
Poet-exponent of the true * Euphuism,’ ‘ is the generall 
end of all the booke.’ 

Milton takes a still higher strain: 

—“What in me is dark 
Illumine; what is low raise and support, 

That to the highth of this great argument 
I may assert Eternal Providence, 

And justify the ways of God to man”— 

Such is the invocation of the Prophet of the Common¬ 
wealth. How utterly different from the impudent hy¬ 
pocrisy of the ‘Divino’ Aretino, or the easy-going 
wantonness of an Ariosto or Trissino! The contrast 
between the ideals of the English and Italian authors is 
worth the attention of any one who wishes to appreciate 
the real worth of English Literature, and can only be 
overlooked by those who strangely consider that artistic 
beauty of style, perfection of form and prettiness of 
sentiment constitute the excellence of * Divine Poesy.’ 

4—2 


52 


ENGLISH AND ITALIAN EPICS. 


But what could be expected from the poets who were 
brought up in the atheistic and dissolute courts of 
Ferrara and Florence ? Ariosto and Tasso, with all 
their richness and elegance, with all their beauty of idea 
and execution, are marred from first to last by wanton 
impurity of thought and wilful licentiousness of language. 
They have rarely a genuine thought for anything higher 
than the gratification of desire; their only real allegi¬ 
ance is offered to 

—“That law of gold, 

That glad and golden law, all free, all fitted, 

Which Nature’s own hand wrote—What pleases is permitted.” 

Spenser, on' the other hand, makes it one of his chief 
objects to inculcate self-restraint and purity of heart 
and life; when he describes chastity as 

“that fairest virtue, far above the rest 1 ” 

he docs so honestly, and not merely for the sake of pay-' 
ing the Virgin Queen a pretty compliment. 

The same contrast is seen from another point of 
view when we contrast the levity and reckless gay¬ 
heartedness of the Southerns with the serious tone that 
characterizes Spenser and Milton, and which, with the 
former, took shape in the personification of the Christian 
virtues (an idea quite alien to Italian methods), and 
with the latter, in the whole conception of the Paradise 
Lost. ‘ Not a ripple of laughter,’ says the historian of 
the English people,‘breaks the calm surface of Spenser’s 
verse*.’ M. Taine, whose French vivacity cannot under¬ 
stand our island-gravity, would attribute this difference 
to the dull foggy atmosphere in which the heavy Briton 
is condemned to dwell, as contrasted with the sunny 
skies of the south, but apart from all reasoning of this 


1 F. Q. HI. Prelude. 


3 J. R. Green, Short History y p. 417. 


ENGLISH AND ITALIAN EPICS. 


53 


kind, it is very probable that Spenser’s seriousness was 
partly, at least, caused by the outrageous lengths to 
which Italian recklessness and godlessness had gone, 
and by the not unreasonable fear that his beloved 
England might, under the contaminating influence of 
foreign libertinism, be brought to a like condition. On 
every side he saw the moral degradation of Poetry. 
His friend Sidney had seen it too, and sorrowed over it, 
as a true lover of poetry must, to see it dragged in the 
mud. ‘ The comedies rather teach than reprehend 
amorous conceits, the lyric is larded with passionate 
sonnets, the Elegiac weeps the want of his mistress.’ 
Hall, whose satires were published about the same time 
as the second part of the Fairy Queen , speaks in far 
more slashing terms: 

“Did never yet no damned libertine, 

No elder heathen, nor new Florentine, 

Tho’ they were famous for lewd liberty 
Venture upon so shameful villainy.” 

Even the best of Spenser’s contemporaries were in 
danger of prostituting their genius in order to gratify 
the depraved taste of the age—a taste engendered chiefly 
bv the ‘wantqn books’ which good bishop Alley had 
condemned as early as 1559. ‘What is so expedient 
Unto a Commonwealth,’ said the Bishop, ‘as not to 
suffer witches to live ? And—I pray you—be not they 
worse than a hundred witches that take men’s senses 
from them 1 ?’ Since his time the evil had grown apace. 
It had become fashionable to write verses urging a 
life of pleasure at the expense of virtue, and the literary 
world was full of pieces after the style of the elegant 
lyric of Lorenzo de Medici, the burden of which is 


See Prynne, Histrio-Mastix. 


$4 ENGLISH AND ITALIAN EPICS. 

“Youths and Maids enjoy to day! 

Nought ye know about to morrow.” 

Shakspere, who, as the author of Venus and Adonis , 
cannot be altogether exonerated from blemish in this 
respect, exactly describes the nature of the evil and its 
source: 

—“Then there are found 
Lascivious metres, to whose venom sound 
The open ear of youth doth always listen; 

Report of fashions in proud Italy, 

Whose manners still our tardy apish nation 
Limps after in base imitation.” 

It was with a deep sense of this corruption of manners 
and degradation of poetry that Spenser wrote his Fairy 
Queen . He and Milton are the Poets of the Puritan 
movement in its best and most liberal phases. They 
would have been poets had they never known a word of 
Italian, and never tasted the ‘sweet and stately measures’ 
of the southern poetry; they would have been ‘Puritans’ 
had there never been any imported vices from Rome 
and Florence to rouse their indignation, but it is open to 
question whether they would ever have had such a hold 
upon the people’s love and reverence had they not been 
enabled, by their appreciation of the Romantic epic of 
the south, to appeal to the sentiments and associations 
which were uppermost in the minds of their contempora¬ 
ries, and which will continue to exercise a charm, so 
long as Strength and Beauty are admired, and Hero- 
worship endures. 

One word about the two Prose epics of the seven¬ 
teenth century. Is it possible that the Bedfordshire 
Tinker who gave to Puritan England a ‘ Christian ’ for 
an Orlando, and a ‘ Mansoul freed ’ for a Gerusalemme 
Liberata, had read Fairfax’s translation of Tasso, or 


ENGLISH AND ITALIAN EPICS. 


55 


Harrington’s of Ariosto? Unlikely as this may appear 
at first sight, there is something to bd said for it. At 
any rate the author of the Pilgrim s Progress and the 
Holy War must have been acquainted at first or second 
hand with the Fairy Queen , and so indirectly he experi¬ 
enced the influence of the Southern epics. Thus, after a 
lapse of 200 years the romance first propagated in a 
profane burlesque by the mocking Pulci, having passed 
through all kinds of treatment, was fashioned by a 
homely local preacher into a text book of earnest 
religion. 


VII. ENGLISH AND ITALIAN LYRICS. 


On the lighter poetry of the latter part of the six¬ 
teenth and the first half of the seventeenth century 
a marked effect continued to be produced by the fashion 
of imitating Italian writers. Hallam, in noticing the 
‘ remarkable sweetness of modulation/ which character¬ 
izes some of the poetry of Elizabeth’s last years, seems 
to agree with the opinion that this is to be attributed to 
‘ the general fondness for music/ A cause which is at 
least as likely may be found in the general fondness for 
the melody of Italian lyrics. Other less commendatory 
characteristics showed themselves in the early Stuart 
period. Cowley’s youthful poems contained imitations 
of the Italian conceits; the puritan Marvell was not free 
from their influence, and the same taste appears as late 
as Dryden. One of Crayshaw’s largest pieces is a trans¬ 
lation from Marini’s' Strage degli Innocenti l and some of 
Herrick’s liveliest lyrics, such as ‘ To live merrily and to 
trust to good verses ,’ are free reproductions of senti¬ 
ments peculiarly Italian,—sentiments of which his better 
self repented when he wrote 

“My unbaptized rhymes, 

Writ in my wild unhallowed times.” 

It is interesting to observe how Marvell, while attracted 
by the graceful form and fancy of Italian poetry, and 
adopting much of its method, rejects and condemns its 

1 Gosse, Seventeenth Century Studies, p. 157. 


ENGLISH AND ITALIAN LYRICS. $7 

ungracious licentiousness; how pure and noble is the 
tone of his dialogue - poem Clorinda and Damon , 
(where the echo device is brought in very cleverly,) or 
the dialogue between the Soul and Pleasure, where all 
seductive charms fail to entice the soul,'Tor 

“Nature wants an art 
To conquer one resolved heart.” 

There were however two kinds of poetry in which 
the example of Italy was particularly strohg. 

One of these was the style which prevailed in the 
first two reigns of the seventeenth .century, and was. 
adopted by Donne, Lovelace, Crayshaw, Herrick, Her¬ 
bert and several others; a school of writers whom Dr 
Johnson christened ‘Metaphysical/ whom others call 
* Fantastic/ and yet others prefer to describe as flourish¬ 
ing in the ‘Decline of Elizabethan poetry/ In one 
sense at least the last phrase pretty accurately describes 
the school, for the kind of writing which they practised 
was a corruption of the Euphuism of Elizabeth’s court. 
For laboured similes, far-fetched conceits, and a tendency 
to sacrifice clearness of thought to cleverness of expres¬ 
sion the verses of John Donne were the lineal descend¬ 
ants of Lyly’s Prose. 

But some of the adherents of this school of poets 
followed another example. They derived much of their 
manner straight from Italy, where Marini, at the begin¬ 
ning of this century, was creating quite a sensation by 
setting a new fashion of verse, its chief features being 
whimsical comparisons, abundance of antithesis, and 
concetti, and pompous descriptions. Crayshaw was a 
Marinist, and probably Herbert, Carew and Herrick 
were not unacquainted with the poems of this new leader 
of fashion. 


58 ENGLISH AND ITALIAN LYRICS. 

As being akin to this kind of writing may be men¬ 
tioned the ‘ Emblems’ of Quarles and similar writers. The 
liking for this kind of composition seems to have been 
first called forth by the Latin verse Emblems of Andrea 
Alciati, published about the middle of the sixteenth cen¬ 
tury; these were soon translated into Italian and French, 
and produced numerous imitations, e.g. those of Juan de 
Horozco. in .1591. But their religious tendency made 
them special favourites in England, where Quarles and 
Wither found a large circulation for their little books. 

Anagrams came into fashion in Queen Elizabeth’s 
time; Puttenham tried to make one on her name, 
remarking that ‘this conceit is w'ell allowed of in France 
and Italy.’ The idea too, of writing verses in various 
shapes first came to Puttenham when he was in Italy, as 
quite a novelty. 

The second species of Poetry in which Italian 
influence was conspicuous was the Pastoral. Ever since 
the appearance in 1502 at the Neapolitan Court of 
Jacopo Sanazzaro’s Arcadia this kind of writing had 
been enjoying a popularity which rather grew than 
diminished as the years went by. By Sanazzaro ‘ a 
literary Eldorado had been discovered, which was 
destined to attract explorers through the next three 
centuries 1 .’ In England one of the first explorers was 
Sir P. Sidney, who devoted himself to giving to his 
countrymen a poetic Romance exactly in the style of 
Sanazzaro. Lyly in his Gallathea , Greene in his 
Morando, Lodge in his Rosalynde made use of the new 
mine that had been opened, and Spenser spent his 
youthful energies upon The Shepherd's Kalendar, A 
fresh impetus was given by the appearance of two other 
Italian mbdels—Tasso’s Aminta in 1581, and Guarini’s 

1 Symonds, Renaissance in Italy, Vol. v. p. 197. 


ENGLISH AND ITALIAN. LYRICS. 


59 

Pastor Fido in 1585. The popularity in England of the 
latter is testified to by Ben Jonson (who himself could 
write gracefully in the Pastoral method): 

“Here’s Pastor Fido,... 

All our English writers, 

I mean such as are happy in the Italian, 

Will deign to steal out of this author, mainly 1 .” 

It is rather curious therefore that no translation of 
this work appeared until Sir Richard Fanshawe brought 
out his version in 1647. The imitations, however, were 
almost countless. Every poet tried his hand at the 
style. Some of these productions were very poor affairs, 
but others were fully deserving of the encomiums they 
received; most of all, the Faithful Shepherdess of Fletcher. 
Milton in Comus, Marvell in Thyrsis and Dorinda , 
Wither in the Shepherd's Hunting , wrote with a grace 
and prettiness which had never been equalled before in 
the English language. In the hands of Wither and 
Browne especially, the Pastoral met with a sympathetic 
treatment which saved it from becoming entirely con¬ 
ventional ; they were inspired with a genuine love for 
the natural beauty of the Country, and there is a simple 
freshness in Browne’s Britannia's Pastorals which we 
miss in the courtly performances of the Italian writers. 
Wither deserves notice for the bold stand which he made 
against the conservative and imitative tendencies of the 
day: 

u Pedants shall not tie my strains 
To our antique poets’ veins; 

* * * * * 

Being born as free as these, 

I shall sing as I shall please.” 

A protest like this was seasonable and useful. There 

1 Volpone , III. 3. 


6o 


ENGLISH AND ITALIAN LYRICS. 


was a danger in Wither’s time of an Academy, or some¬ 
thing of that kind, being, established, which should 
dictate to every one what was good poetry and what 
was not, and which should prescribe regulations for all 
kinds of composition. Such a Corporation or Censorship, 
whatever its advantages, would not have been a boon 
to England. In Italy, where the idea originated, the 
numerous Academies, so far from advancing the true 
interests of poetry, were largely instrumental in causing 
the artificiality and poverty of the ‘ Seicentisti.’ Above 
all things it was considered necessary that the Italian 
poet should conform to rule: he always wrote with the 
thought of the Academy before his mind, and so his 
genius was.hampered, his flights of fancy were confined 
to lines fixed by others. The French Academy, though 
different from institutions of the same name in Florence 
and Milan, was due to their example, and was founded 
in 1636. In England no less an authority than Milton 
recommended the establishment of a similar society to 
those which he had visited with so much pleasure in the 
company of his friend Diodati. His words are worth 
quoting: 

“It were happy for the Commonwealth if our magistrates...would take 
into their care...the managing of our public sports and festival pastimes, 
that they might be such as...may civilize, adorn, and make discreet our 
minds, by the learned and affable meeting of frequent academies, and 
the procurement of wise and artful recitations;...whether this may be... 
at set and solemn paneguries, in theatres, porches or what other ;place 
or way may win most upon the people, to receive at once both recreation 
and instruction, let them in authority consult 1 .” 

The Earl of Roscommon, who had travelled in Italy 
during the Commonwealth, formed a plan for ‘ refining 
our language and fixing its standard/ and Dryden is 


1 Reason of Church Government. 


ENGLISH AND ITALIAN LYRICS. 6 1 

said to have sympathized with his notions, which how¬ 
ever, though taken up enthusiastically by some persons, 
and revived, later on, by Dean Swift, never came to any¬ 
thing. It is not easy to say what would have been the 
effect, if Milton’s project—conceived in such a different 
spirit from the whimsically-named clubs of dilettante 
poets of Italy—could have been realized, but probably 
we have not very much reason to regret its failure. 
Perhaps the characteristic which most distinguishes the 
great English poets of these centuries from the Italian 
is the independence which, even when they are copying, 
leads them to cast off the restraints of the original, and 
to be impatient of the conventional fetters of so-called 
decorum and good-taste, to which the Southerns yielded 
so complacently. We cannot regret it. Let Shakspere 
be ‘barbarous’ and ‘wild.’ Let Spenser be ‘rustick’ 
and ‘gothick.’ Better so than to be unnatural and 
affected. Better the rugged majesty of the honest 
Teuton than the voluptuous effeminacy of the doubtful 
Tuscan. Let Italy wear the laurel for graces of 
symmetry, elegant correctness, and sweet melody; 
England will be content with loving her poet-sons for 
their kindly strength, their soaring fancy, and their 
earnest purpose. 


CONCLUSION. 

It only remains to sum up. What is the net 
amount of our debt to Italy ? Of course the influence 
exerted by and on a literature is not one that can be 
easily counted or weighed, but, as was said at the outset, 
it is possible to estimate pretty accurately what was the 
actual effect in this case, and this is because the Italian 
charm was so strong and lasting. First then in im¬ 
portance among the actual results we should be inclined 
to place the impetus given to our Drama, especially to 
Tragedy and the Romantic Comedy of Shakspere. The 
second place should perhaps be occupied by the fertile 
suggestions offered to Spenser and Milton. Not lower 
in the list must be put that expansion and enrichment 
of the resources of the vernacular which Italian refine¬ 
ment brought about; and immediately following this 
should be reckoned the prose Euphuism of Elizabeth’s, 
and the poetical Euphuism of Charles Is reign. Then 
must be remembered the germs of prose fiction, the 
additions made to versification in the sonnet, the 
Spenserian stanza, and blank verse; the additions made 
to the vocabulary; the cultivation of quips, proverbs, 
anagrams and ‘elegant sentences,’ and the naturalization 
of the Pastoral. In fact it may be now asserted that 


CONCLUSION. 


63 

Italy gave us materials and colours, easel and paint¬ 
brushes, set models and copies before us, and then left 
us to paint our own pictures. She furnished our poets 
with finer apparatus, and more attractive subjects than 
they have ever had before or since. It was 'matter and 
form that we derived from her; the spirit was our own. 
Great as our obligations were, they do not detract from 
the originality of the English Muse. The ‘Italianate’ 
polish which sometimes obscured our authors’ native 
worth was only superficial; when that was rubbed off 
the discovery was made how much better the plain 
British oak was without such varnish. So the absurd 
and objectionable fashions copied ‘apishly’ from‘Italy 
passed away, and there was left behind the glorious 
workmanship of all the noble thoughts and musical 
strains that we associate with the names of Shakspere, 
Spenser and Milton. 




































































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